Donna sez, "EFF has a brand-new action alert that lets people tell Senator Rick Santorum — yes, that Santorum — what to do with a new bill that represents the worst kind of stupid IP policy-making:"
The National Weather Services Duties Act (S.786) would ban NWS from "competing" with private entities by making it unlawful for the agency to publish user-friendly weather data and barring NWS experts from speaking one-on-one to news agencies. Why? Because Senator Santorum believes that companies like AccuWeather would make more money if they didn't have to compete with "free." That's right – he believes you should pay twice for your weather information in order to line the pockets of the private weather industry, which *already* benefits from repackaging the data that tax-funded agencies like NWS give away. That's not only unfair, it's a bad precedent for our national information resources.
(Thanks, Donna!)
Update: Patrick sez, "One of the pay weather services that would benefit from this bill just happens to be a contributor to Senator Santorum, located in State College, PA."
